Revisiting John Hulett

SUNFIELD – The grass is wet from an early morning rain as John Hulett takes his cocker spaniel Goldie for a walk along a wheat field on his Ionia County farm. At the edge of the field is a patch of woods that drops off toward Sebewa Creek. In the woods is a large rock where the 72-year-old devout Christian sometimes sits to contemplate life.

He’d had a hard-scrabble childhood following his itinerant preacher father from one Kentucky coal mining town to another, growing up in a home where money was scarce and love was seldom shown. He’d made different choices in his life. He wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t poor, either. And he never hesitated to express love to his wife, children and grandchildren.

“From where I came from, everything I am is because of choice,” Hulett said. “Individual choices can make a difference.”

In January, the Donald Trump voter had struck a conciliatory tone. He’d said he could understand how people with different life experiences could come to different conclusions on how to vote. “At the end of the day, whoever is president, the world is going to go on,” he said.

Six months into a presidency that exposed deep divides among Michigan residents, Hulett is less charitable. “I think he (Trump) is getting unreal resistance,” Hulett said. “I’m exhausted with Hillary coming up with new reasons she lost. We had an election, move on.”

He’s happy with Trump’s immigration stance (“I don’t think we should make allowances for people who want to come here and … make us subject to Sharia law or Hispanic law or whatever”), and thinks “the whole Russian connection” is a distraction from real issues.

“I’m overall pleased with the direction he’s headed,” Hulett said. “I would do it all over again.”

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